Today marks the half-way point in my “60 Days of Gratitude” project. If you’re slogging through with me in this little exercise … well, I’m grateful you’re here. 🙂
Today, I’m also grateful for the grateful.
Let me explain…
Month: August 2017
Ask Leo! – 14 and Counting
Today is the 14th anniversary of the very first Ask Leo! article.
I’d left Microsoft a year and a half earlier, at which point I’d joined a mastermind group of internet entrepreneurs. At the end of April in 2003 we had our first face-to-face conference, and it was within that conference that the germ of the idea that would become Ask Leo! was born.
Veterinary Medicine
Pictured above is Dagmar. She’s a 13+ year old Cardigan Welsh Corgi.
Dagmar has lymphoma, a type of cancer.
What makes Dagmar remarkable is that as I write this she’s been in remission for well over a year and a half. Later this year we’ll celebrate two years since diagnosis. That’s well above average, and definitely puts her at the far end of the bell curve of cancer survival.
Connecting and Opportunities to Give Back
To quote Ask Leo! on Business, “The internet is connecting us – across the street or across the planet. Mankind is more connected today in more ways than ever before.”
And yes, that has both upsides and downsides.
Today I’m grateful for one of the undervalued upsides: online philanthropy.
An Abundance Of Information and Opportunity
We have, today, available at our fingertips a wealth of knowledge that was unthinkable just a few decades ago. While it’s not exactly as he originally envisioned it, Bill Gates’ “Information At Your Fingertips” has come to pass in ways that most of us would never have considered 20 years ago.
And yet we take it all for granted. Bill Murray captured it correctly just a few years ago: “My iPhone has 2 million times the storage of the 1969 Apollo 11 spacecraft computer. They went to the moon. I throw birds at pig houses.”
It’s Good to be A Geek
It’s something I’ve said on many occasions: it’s good to be a geek. It’s good to be comfortable with and somewhat knowledgeable about technology. It opens doors, makes classes of problems not problems at all, and just generally makes my life more interesting and fun.
It’s also what allows me to help others; from Ask Leo! to select friends and neighbors, my comfort with technology serves me well and allows me to serve others.
Though I do wish more people weren’t quite so timid when it comes to technology — it could serve them better as well.
Mastermind
A mastermind group is a peer-to-peer mentoring concept used to help members solve their problems with input and advice from the other group members. —Wikipedia
This post will have to be intentionally vague on specifics, for reasons which will become clear.
In 2001 I was invited to join a mastermind group of online internet entrepreneurs. Doing so changed my life.
Genetics
I chose good parents.
While there are a lot of things we can, and often should, do to keep ourselves healthy and long-lived, there are two that are major influences that are completely out of our control: genetics and random chance.
I keep seeing reports that some are starting to believe that it’s chance — the luck of the draw — that’s responsible for more cancer than previously understood. I guess I’m grateful for my luck so far, but honestly … it’s my genes I appreciate more.
Power of Attorney
One of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me was power of attorney.
I know, it doesn’t sound particularly romantic, or fun, or even special, but I can tell you that it was incredibly pragmatic and saved me no end of trouble when I finally needed it.
Money
I was telling a friend recently that in general people have a strange relationship with money.
At one level it’s difficult to talk about with anyone other than your spouse, banker, or financial planner. At another it’s often the cause of significant consternation when trying to do something as simple as splitting the check.
Talking about what you do or don’t have is often considered to be either boasting, or feeling sorry for yourself. There’s a lot of shame around both having and not having money.
I do want to talk about it, and though I won’t get into specifics I don’t want to be seen as boasting. I had to think long and hard about posting this publicly, which goes to show that how we feel about money can be very complicated.
I’m grateful not for what I have, but for what it enables me to do.
Education
The older get the more I come to realize that education isn’t a state, it’s a process. You’re never done; it’s a life-long process.
I believe that many people — perhaps even most — take their education for granted, and as a result fail to take advantage of the many opportunities available. Certainly those who have basic education available — much of the world still does not — are very likely not to realize what a wonderful gift it is.
I try not to. In fact, I try very hard to be grateful for all of my education – past and present.